Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Without assuming the paternity of these lines (I found them on the internet at one point, I just don’t remember where) here’s the…

Funny Top 10 List For A Successful Power Metal Band

1. In a power metal world, everything steel is good, and anything good must be compared to steel.
2. You are allowed to be blonde.
3. Pick a theme and stick to it. Manowar are warriors of true metal, and they don’t get to sing about anything else. Rhapsody has their Algalord chronicles. Hammerfall has their steel, hammers, and templar. Running Wild has pirates. Blind Guardian has Tolkein. None of them are allowed to sing about anything else.
4. If at all possible, be Michael Kiske. If this is not possible, pretend to be Michael Kiske.
5. Your album cover should include at least one of the following: fire, steel, weird glowing magical items, irregularly muscular men, fists thrust into the air, weaponry, magic creatures (preferably dragons), or bright beams of light around somebody/something.
6. 16th notes are the only notes. Unless you’re singing, in which case you are not permitted to hold a note for any less than 2 bars. By the way, you need at least two guitar players. How else are you going to have dueling guitar solos?
7. If you can’t be Michael Kiske, you can at least be Timo Tolkki. Actually, don’t be Timo Tolkki.
8. Wizards! You need wizards!
9. Wear armor if at all possible. Hammerfall can give you an idea of the variety of acceptable armors, ranging from leather to ring-mail.
10. Never leave Europe.For purposes of the above, Japan may be counted as part of Europe. Oh, and South America was colonized by Europeans, so it can count too.

Just as a note to those of you already angry at me for publishing this list: guys, please keep in mind I am a fan of power metal. I lived on Helloween rhythms, I love Michael Kiske’s voice and used to fall asleep with Eric Adams (Manowar) screaming into my ears. When being 17 years old I remember I fell asleep and the phone started to ring and I remember thinking (in between sleeping and waking up) what’s that sound that I have never managed to hear before…

It was my phone ringing and my mother screaming at me to turn the stereo down…

PS: To all of you coming from StumbleUpon, making this article THE MOST VISITED PAGE of this site, THANK YOU!

Please don’t forget to give a thumb up to this page so other people see it as well.

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OK, no guitars in this post but because it made me laugh and due to cultural associations (you know, Gothic rock and stuff) I have decided to post this here. So, here we go!

This guy walks his fiancee on a leash all day long. While trying to get into a bus the driver stopped them by telling them that on his bus no dog is allowed. Man, was this one funny guy or what?!! Am I retarded or is the world going too fast for me?

You can read the whole story here.

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Well, today I have discovered (thanks to Dr J) an other way of singing (not playing) hard rock! I can tell you that in the beginning I didn’t understand what it was all about, then I got it and it made my day!

I feel like in that movie, Sliders, where people travel from one universe to an other (it runs here on TV, OK?) where Apocalyptica does not exist under the same form I used to know, but exists under the form below.

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Well, of course you love that high traffic that DIGG sends to you when you manage to have a story on the front page. Me too, so, of course, I asked myself what makes it on Digg in this field of guitars? I went to Digg homepage and searched for guitar. Search was set to Front Page Stories. Well, here’s the…

Top 10 list of what makes it on DIGG (for guitars)

1. A Guitar Hero God plays “Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce watch!
   VIDEO 3132 diggs
2. Zero Punctuation reviews Guitar Hero III watch!
   VIDEO 2993 diggs
3. This week’s South Park about Guitar Hero
   SITE gamernode.com 2002 diggs
4. South Park Guitar Hero watch!
   VIDEO 1951 diggs
5. Douchebag On Guitar watch!
   VIDEO 1189 diggs
6. Guitar Hero…Outdoor Edition view!
   IMAGE 1128 diggs
7. 3 Talented Kids Play “El Cumbanchero” (Guitar + Mandolin) watch!
   VIDEO 636 diggs
8. Guitars that make you go “WOW” view!
   IMAGE 681 diggs
9. How to Rule on Double Guitar watch!
   VIDEO 494 diggs
10. Guitar Hero III Wireless Guitars Coming Soon
    SITE engadget.com 488 diggs

As you can see, out of this Top 10 list, only 2 entries are text based, the rest being VIDEOS and IMAGES. Well, that’s a strong indication that if you want your guitar related blog to make it on DIGG front page, post a video or a crazy image with guitars. DIGG readers don’t quite…read, if you get my point!

By the way…DIGG this!

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Since everybody’s talking these days about Guitar Hero 3, even if I am not into this, (I prefer my real guitar!!), here’s a little something that will make you, all Guitar Hero fans out there fighting for the best scores, go wild!

Man, this fellow never fails! So, beat this if you can! The name is Guitar HeroNoid and you can find more about it here.

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Interested by the history of the song Layla, about how it was written , I started to look for some information. I found more than I was expecting, to be honest. Seems that the song was composed by Eric Clapton for Patti Boyd Harrison, the wife of George Harrison at that time and later Clapton’s wife. Damn, what a small world.

Of course, you all Clapton fans out there will tell me this was common knowledge. Well, not for me! I was not in the trivia thing…

Anyway, for those of you interested in this kind of information, here’s a long list of what Eric Clapton did in his life, from a less biographical point of view. I must admit it captivated me for a short while!

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Today I was thinking to write about something else, but while searching for a particular thing on YouTube, I got a lot of videos with Slash. Again, Slash! Seems that this guy had a lot of interesting featuring, so I thought about pointing you the top 5 Slash featuring acts. So, here we go:

1) Slash meets Michael Jackson

I guess everybody knows Give Into Me , was quite famous at his time. The starting riff reminds me of Take me for a little while of David Coverdale and Page, also of one of Shakira’s song that I can not name and…one of my own. Honestly, after hearing Shakira’s song I got mad cause my song was 3-4 years older. Well…

Not one of my favorites, but it reminds in my mind over the years. I didn’t search for this song, I just knew it.

Just a solo thing, as he says, a s a favor to the record company, but it resulted in a great song, IMO. Here’s the song.

An other beautiful solo contribution of Slash.

Well, here’s just pure rock, I guess he loved it too! And Duff is there too!

If you have any other interesting featuring acts, let me know. In the meantime, don’t forget to Digg this!

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During struggling period with the band, we’ve had our share of “unique points of view” from one producer or an other.

I remember one time (we used to play pop rock at that moment) we went to a record company in Bucharest, introduced by somebody, to speak about our “future” in music.

So, here we are in this guy’s office, 4 people on one side of the table, namely THE BAND and one person on the other side
, THE PRODUCER-MANAGER.

I will call him producer for the sake of this post.

The guy listened to what we used to play back then, he had the tape there, knew what was our musical direction, pop-rock as I have already said.

Producer(to the drummer): So, how old are you?

Drummer: 34

Producer: You’re 26. I see you wear long hair. You’ll cut your hair and die it.

Drummer: —silence—

Producer(to the lead singer) : What’s your age?

Lead singer: 31.

Producer: You’re 25. How do you wear your hair? (the lead singer had kind of a baseball hat)

Lead singer,taking off his hat: I shave my head.

Producer(to me): How old are you?

Me: 26

Producer: You’re OK. The hair is OK (I had short hair at that moment) we need to work a bit on shirts/outfit but it will work out. (I was wearing my hippest t-shirt, totally out of rock but totally into new trends, IMO, so my self pride was hurt a bit cause I did my best at that moment to look hip and trendy, you know, to have that “artist” look, sun glasses in my hair, damn, I looked good!!!)

I don’t remember what the guy told to the bass player but he was OK too, except the hair that he needed to arrange a bit. If I well remember that started a bit of a resistance from his side cause he had enough hair, as we used to laugh, for a shower and a strong wind, after wearing it long for years (Steve Harris fan for good!!! Iron Maiden rules!)

Producer: Well, now about music. You need hits, you need something to work in dance clubs, to make people dance.

We were already disoriented so anything he would have said would have been taken for granted, we were kind of groggy already. Shortly speaking, he pointed us to a famous local band, Voltaj , playing kind of a dance music with rock instruments, after 20 years of struggling in heavy metal world. You need this kind of music to make it!
See the video below for an idea.

So we left his office arguing if we’ll do it or not. Some of us wanted, some of us didn’t want or at least not feeling OK about it. Anyway, the whole thing failed at one point, frankly I have no idea why, maybe axlfuckingrose remembers.By the way, he’s the lead singer I am speaking about, my mate in this band since 1998 and since 1997 in an other band, Kapela, I will present him to you at some moment as a guest blogger here. In the meantime here’s his site (in Romanian, poetry and pictures)

Well, so that was some story we’ve lived to tell. There were more during years, I will tell them here also but the whole point is how much are you willing to change to make it big with your music? Will you change the look? The music? The band??!

How much are you willing to take and what will make you snap and say no? What’s your boiling point?

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After Chris Broderick joined Megadeth, I was curious who will be the new guitar player of Jag Panzer so today I went to their website and, even if a bit late(he joined Jag Panzer on 14), here’s the fact: the new guitar player of Jag Panzer, replacing Chris Broderick, is Chris Lasegue of Chain of Command.

As guitarist Mark Briody comments on Jag Panzer’s website, in the official press release:

“We had set the bar pretty high for lead guitar playing with our first full-length album. There was much concern among fans and critics as to whether or not we could maintain such a high level of musicianship in the lead guitar department. Christian quelled those concerns about two seconds into his first solo. A large part of the underground popularity of ‘Chain of Command’ is easily attributed to the electrifying guitar playing of Christian Lasegue. Christian was a great guitar player back then and his chops are light years beyond that today. I’m excited to be working with him again.”

I searched the internet for a Chain Of Command website and I have found this picture on a Chain of Command website. Boy, it’d better be a mistake somewhere otherwise Jag Panzer are doomed!!
( :-)  seems that there was this band in the 80’s with the same name with these 3 guys, had nothing to do with the current band but I couldn’t resist posting this picture!!!)

So, now the facts: the guy in the main picture with the red electric guitar is Chris Lasegue, I found his MySpace page and I have listen his songs, I quite like them. As an observation, he is not a shredder. He is softer with a more profound approach, IMO, his influences include Eric Johnson, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis…I guess this is one of the reasons his licks are more jazzy sometimes. The 3rd song is on acoustic guitar.

Judging by those songs that he has on his MySpace page, I would buy his CD to listen more.

How about you?

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Yesterday while driving I was listening to this show on a radio channel here about the first tape one’s bought. Boy, that made me think!!!

I remember that I asked my mother, I think I was 12 or something to buy me a cassette player and I went with her to a shop nearby and bought one of those 2 rooms stereo cassette players, I even remember the brand name, if it is even a brand…It was called International. Well, that was it! I had my stereo, just that I had no cassette to listen to so I went to a store nearby that was our local half bookstore/half anything else that had anything to do with paper, pens, cassettes, whatever…

I didn’t even know what to buy, you imagine that back then, in Romania we didn’t have any music televisions to give the children any musical taste, even a bad one. So, for I don’t remember what reasons I picked a tape (that was as much as I could afford at that moment, I was 12 or 13), payed for it and went home to listen to it.

Imagine that the tape I picked was Jimi Hendrix!!! Without any musical culture at that moment, with a dubious musical taste and nobody to lead me through music (my mother didn’t have anything to do with music, so…) I picked something that was out of my league for that age…

I played that tape wanting so much to love it, to have something to speak about the next day with my colleagues…but all that I could get was a head ache (no kidding, it is real!) I could not listen more than one side of the album. I don’t even know what album was that!

How unfortunate was that? One of the most important electric guitar players of all times to make such a bad impression on me? I totally hated it and switched to rap music, which I listened until I was about 16 I think when rock music asked it’s share…

A few years later I tried to come back to listen that tape, but I still didn’t like it. I think that the first impression counted a lot in my case since, despite the great appreciation that most guitar players show to Jimi Hendrix and despite my intellectual appreciation for him, I still don’t like his music. If somebody asks me, I rather say I like other kind of guitar players, and it is true, but I think that it is really related to this first experience with rock music, is related to that first tape I bought…

So, do you remember the first cassette you’ve bought? Or was a vinyl?

What’s your story?

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